It smells like school.

More specifically, it  smells like gym class. That mix of sweat, rubber, and bleach. Lots of bleach. So much bleach, it withers the nose hairs — stay in there too long, and the polyester in your gym shorts will start to peel and blister, as if held just away from a match flame.

On the walls, monitors. Different stations playing. One plays an odd, almost jarring assortment of music videos: Megadeth, Lady Gaga, Duran Duran, Black Crowes. Another plays Fox News; perhaps I could imagine pumping my legs and chasing down a pack of fleeing Birthers, or fake-biking over the sluggish bodies of Teabaggers. (Then again: Shep Smith. You kinda have to love Shep Smith.) A third, sports. A fourth, I don’t even know.

Nobody speaks.

It’s just the squeaking of machines. The panting. The grunting. The Megadeth and Duran Duran. The fans whirring.

I need my iPod — well, iPhone — or I’ll go fucking batty.

I bring my own beat. The “Ezzerzize” Playlist. Asteroids Galaxy Tour, Cold Cut, Crystal Method, Jay-Z, Lady Sovereign, Nine Inch Nails, Santogold, the Ting Tings.

It puts me in the mode. Not the mood — the fucking mode. Goggles down. Robot heart, engaged.

Lets me tune out.

Lets me watch.

I watch the two dudes in love with their biceps. They don’t watch the women. They watch themselves. Were it possible, each would love to masturbate with the crook of his bemuscled arm, crushing his tiny penis beneath the stampede at the gun show. The walls have mirrors. These guys love that. If they were more honest with themselves, they’d just make out and get it over with.

I watch the two girls that never seem to be working out. They’re a little sweaty; hard not to be, since the place is a goddamn bog. These two, they orbit. They walk the channels. You see one on a machine, but then she’s like a ghost; gone a few seconds later, as if she never stepped onto it in the first place. Sometimes, I wonder: are they even here? Maybe they died here, years ago. Maybe their skeletons are in the foundation. These are just their ghosts — spectral gym birds, flitting to and fro. They’re not the only ones. Others wander, too. They stare. They seem lost. Wayward souls. Was there a fire, here? Are they all spirits?

I watch the man next to me. Mid-50s. He’s on the ellipticals. He’s pumping his legs like the pistons in a car. I’m surprised he hasn’t launched his shins up through his asshole. He’s wearing his mad dog face. That fucker’s running. He’s running far and fast. Is he running to? Or from? Either way, he puts my slugabed body to shame.

I watch the older woman in front of me. A stumbling, leisurely walk on the treadmill. She lifts up her shirt. Her body looks like wads of pale clay stuck to a crooked column; it’s all awkward lumps and pockets of adipose topography, hills and dales, buttes and valleys. To emphasize her hotness, she slaps her skin and laughs like a witch.

I watch the Gym Rats: guys and girls who are here every night, without fail. This is their kingdom. They strut like roosters. They lean on machines. They’re exercising more than their physical muscles: the social muscles must flex, too. Of course, most of them are out of shape.

I watch the girl a few machines over. Girl in green. Girl has hollow eyes. I don’t think she blinks. Maybe she can fire lasers out of those things.

I watch the really fat guy on the sit-up machine. He’s sweating buckets. His wife just stares at him like she hates him.

I’m sweating, too. Not buckets. Just a slow seep. Got a rag. Mop it up. Move on. Run, climb, bike — all fake, I’m going nowhere, but I feel the burn, and the device tells me I’m Doing Things like making revolutions or laps or burning calories or increasing my heartrate or feeding Third World children or catching MRSA.

We’re all hooked up to our devices. The machines, yes, but also: our iPods, our phones, our heart rate monitors, our pedometers.

Makes me wonder: are we all powering something? A sinister something? Does a Great Old One slumber beneath this place? Are our fevered, mechanized motions feeding it, somehow? Are we slaves to it, siphoning it devotion with every step? Maybe it’s not sinister at all. Maybe one day the roof will just come off the place, and a big colorful hot air balloon will rise over us, and a man in a top hat with bluebirds on his waxed mustache will wave down at us and shout, “Thank you, kind peoples, for helping me and my Mystery Balloon be back on the air currents to adventure! On to Great Xanadu! Goodbye! Goodbye…”

And he’ll throw us chocolate coins, which we’ll eat, which we’ll feel guilty for eating since, aren’t we supposed to be exercising and not eating candy?

…

Hour later, I’m done. Flesh red. No sweat, I think, except — y’know, lots of sweat.

Muscles sore.

Knees rough.

New sneakers came through, though. Blisters, begone.

No man in the balloon. No awakened Nyarlathotep.

Maybe tomorrow, when I go back.

For now, it’s out into the cold, which feels good.